The Age of Scylightenment
The Age of Scylightenment (September - October 2007) was the short time period in which TLDR administration, with Scyle as its charismatic new leader, embraced authoritarian tactics to try and save TLDR in the aftermath of the disastrous Dark Age. This is when The Rise of Scylightenment occurred, as well as Coreiel's Visit and the Scyle-Mitten Feud. The Rise of Scylightenment Scylightmenment, Scyle's authoritarian philosophy, began to directly shape TLDR administration policy after Morek promoted him to admin. He began by banning several members, most of which had come from IFAP, just as he had been advocating for months. He claimed that their low-quality posts had been ruining the TLDR and had driving members away for some time. The rest of the administrators, desperate for any kind of improvement, allowed it to happen, wondering if there was actually something to Scyle's hostile rhetoric. It was the largest mass banning TLDR had ever seen. The Mandy Regime As the rest of the administration turned from innocent bystanders to active participants, Lazrik decided to give them a new, semi-nonsensical name, changing the administrator usergroup to "Mandies" and wordfiltering each administrator's name—Lazrik, Morek, Scyle, NickLachey, and Glue—to "Mandy", making them practically unidentifiable in conversations and quotes. In confluence with Scyle's new administration technique, the Mandies took on a more oppressive form of rule, on many occasions disappearing threads that criticized the administration or were hostile toward one of its members, methods that were practically unheard of on the TLDR until then. This resulted in several small revolts, but with Morek, the former people's advocate, on the side of the Mandies, who would not hesitate to abuse their powers, the weak uprisings were swiftly dealt with. The TLDR had emerged from The Dark Age as a new kind of forum. Coreiel's Visit Scyle, who had remained relatively popular on the WoW OT, had further plans to forge TLDR into a grand new empire, and although it is not completely known how he did it, he pulled the necessary strings that got Coreiel, the former mod of the WoW OT and perpetrator of The OT Holocaust of early 2006, to post on TLDR, claiming to have met her at the most recent Blizzcon. Many TLDRers had been banned by her over a year and a half earlier and some were initially angry, but it was clear that her celebrity outweighed any ill will. A massive thread resulted, in which Coreiel posted pictures proving that the visit was not a trick. She posted several more times the following day and then disappeared, but she had served her purpose. Scyle credited himself with saving the TLDR as a result of Coreiel's visit. Posts-per-day were instantly up and some members who had left during The Age of Decline found themselves returning. It looked as though TLDR was finally out of the slump in which it had been stuck for nearly four months. A New Age of Imperialism? With TLDR stronger than it had been in a long while, some TLDRers were anxious to begin raiding again, especially against IFAP. A secret, invisible forum was created and members that showed interest were given access to it, including several legendary raiders from the early days. Although a great deal of initial interest had been shown, it soon fell short. The very first raid saw a scheduling mishap, which generated discouragement among the raiders. In the end, only one semi-successful raid was carried out against TeenHut.net in which only a few raiders participated. The secret raid board remained mostly dead from then on and only served as a secret place to occasionally discuss the state of enemy forums such as IFAP and Free OT whose members sometimes posted on the TLDR. The Scyle-Mitten Feud Ages ago, before Scyle had taken on a more evil posting style, Mitten had promised him nudes if he posted his real life picture. Scyle had done so, but Mitten had not held up her end of the bargain and Scyle had ended up feeling humiliated. Ever since then, their relationship had degenerated until Scyle was now directly attacking her at every chance he got. This led to multiple lengthy drama threads, with other posters taking sides and fueling the fire. Scyle eventually found a way to contact Mitten's boyfriend over World of Warcraft, sending him images of Mitten eating her foot on stickam, among others, leading to a real life argument between Mitten and her boyfriend and kicking the feud into full gear, with Mitten firing back in full force at Scyle and announcing that she could no longer reveal any real life details about herself for fear that Scyle would use them to further terrorize her. The feud would be ongoing. Scyle's Downfall The more the TLDR improved, the more unnecessary the Mandies' tactics were beginning to seem. Since Coreiel's visit, little else had been done on the part of Scyle. In early October, the admins suddenly found that they had all been demoted to normal members, supposedly including Lazrik himself, who had been the root admin. According to Lazrik, Glue had attempted a coup of the forum and had found a way to demote the root admin, but had accidentally demoted himself as well in the process, leaving TLDR completely leaderless. After several days, the admins were restored, all except for one: Scyle. After having a change of heart concerning Scyle's methods, Lazrik had orchestrated the incident as a means of ousting him with a minimum of drama. Lazrik had been a secret admin the entire time, and now, having served its purpose, the Age of Scylightenment had passed. Navigation <<-The Dark Age------Index------The Age of Rebirth->> Category:TLDR History Category:History